


A What Now?

by Tahlruil



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Borderline crack, But He's Fine Now, Except for Peter the One Time, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Stiles, Prompt Fic, Stiles Mind is Blown, Teacher Peter Hale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 20:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13842882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tahlruil/pseuds/Tahlruil
Summary: Stiles has always found Peter attractive and kind of distracting, but he's always managed to deal.He sneaks a peek here and there while pretending not to, admits to nothing, and doesn't think about the fact that everyone in both the McCall and Hale Packs probably knows about it. It's just a thing, a thing he's worked around for the two years that Peter's been back from the dead.But when Peter comes to a pack meeting withglitterin his hair... Stiles can't work around or ignore that. Learning why it's there is only the beginning, because it sparks off something of an obsession.Which is probably why Peter had left it there in the first place, the asshole.





	A What Now?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SunsetSilverFlame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunsetSilverFlame/gifts).



> Okay. XD So. XD
> 
> This is in answer to a prompt left in the comments of the latest installment of 'Winding Roads to Flowering Fields'. It was an awesome prompt, featuring Peter Hale as a kindergarten teacher and I love the idea. I meant to treat it seriously. But I was super tired and really caffeinated and when I sat down to write this yesterday it came out kind of, you know. Crack-like.
> 
> I totally plan to revisit this idea at some point and do it justice. But when I read it over again today it made me giggle so I thought I would share it with everyone in the meantime.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :D

Stiles knew he was staring - had been staring, in fact, for an unreasonable amount of time. Peter Hale was pretty (understatement) and definitely deserved a good ol' hairy eyeball every now and then, but usually Stiles was more discreet about it. Usually he could ping-pong his attention between Peter and Derek (who was also very pretty, so score) and Scott (way less pretty, but he was a decoy) and the rest of the pack members so that no one would know that he found the older Hale werewolf very fetching.

'Very fetching', of course, meaning 'hot like drinking straight sriracha sauce while standing on sun scorched desert sands next to a lava flow'. 

Despite that, usually he could keep his actual staring to a minimum. The ping-pong method was great, as was the 'I am very intensely focused on this text, _Peter_ , so stop bothering me, _Peter_ , and by the way, _Peter_ , could you please pass me that water bottle, _Peter_ , that reaching for will absolutely not show off your ass perfectly, _Peter_ , so I will not be sneaking a peek, _Peter_ '. It was a whole system, one that Stiles was pretty sure everyone had figured out but politely ignored. From the way Peter sometimes smirked or otherwise indulged him, Stiles knew his werewolf senses had absolutely picked up what Stiles' body was putting down. In the two years that Peter had been back from the dead it had become a whole _thing_.

None of that was why he had been fixated on staring at Peter for the last fifteen minutes of the pack meeting.

No, what had caught his attention was the sparkly bits of glitter in the werewolf's usually immaculate hair. It looked like maybe it had been on his hands - or _someone's_ hands anyway - which had then been raked through the strands, because there were a couple different, definable trails of the stuff. Stiles had just... just so many questions about that glitter, and the longer he stared the more those questions piled up. It was like a car crash in his brain, really, backing up traffic and ruining everyone's afternoon.

He was supposed to be paying attention, because witches or something? Scott had filled him in when he arrived, but that information had been tucked into the dashboard of the car at the bottom of his mental multi-car pileup. There was no way of getting to it, and anyway it was incidental because _glitter_. Who had the glitter come from? Peter didn't seem like the kind of guy who picked up strippers (most of whom were, Stiles was pretty sure, legally obligated to be wearing glitter) and anyway he definitely would have showered after having any kind of sex. But glitter could conceivably outlast a shower, so maybe? But Peter was so fastidious usually, so if it had been a sex-and-then-shower thing, the werewolf would have noticed it and probably spent hours picking the stuff out.

So maybe it wasn't a sex thing.

Was Peter some sort of secret craft junkie? Maybe he spent hours upon hours sitting at home alone making little projects. Maybe he had been making a sign that required the use of glue and glitter and a plate that would now _never_ be glitter free. For some reason every craft-home had a plate that was covered in glue and glitter that survived every half-hearted attempt to clean if off. Maybe Peter had a glue and glitter plate; maybe today had been the weekly 'try to clean it off' day. Maybe the werewolf had spent the day doing depression crafts that involved glitter and making sad faces. Maybe leaving glitter in his hair was his way of crying out for help.

Or maybe _Peter_ was the stripper? Stiles would definitely pay money to watch him take his clothes off, except sometimes he got to watch the show for free because werewolves. Apparently born werewolves were really pretty chill with public nudity, and Peter absolutely had nothing to be ashamed of. He could totally make bank taking his clothes off for stupid humans who didn't realize how unimportant that sort of shit was for someone like Peter. It was just that Peter didn't strike him as a glitter stripper - Stiles saw him as more of a leather and heavy eyeliner kind of stripper, but what the hell did he know? He was an eighteen-year-old mostly-virgin, and his only experience with strippers thus far had been at the Jungle. Peter _definitely_ didn't strike him as the kind of stripper who would work at the Jungle.

Peter would be like... like a high class stripper. One you ordered special at a fancy establishment. Peter Hale would be like a gourmet version of a stripper and he would thank you kindly to fucking remember that.

Glitter and gourmet did not go together, ergo the distracting trails in Peter's hair probably had different origins.

Why the fuck did Peter have glitter in his hair?

"Stiles!"

"What? Huh? Oh! Hiiii, Derek. How are you? Wait, no - don't answer that, I already asked earlier and your eyebrows answered. I am totally paying attention to this conversation, so you definitely do not need to repeat the thing that has you yelling my name." Neither Derek nor his eyebrows were amused by Stiles' attempts at stalling him, but Peter was snickering over in his little corner. Fucking asshole had probably put glitter in his hair just to distract Stiles and get him in trouble. That was just the sort of thing that-- wait, fuck, it was working. "Okay! So. There's. Uh. Witches?"

" _Wendigos_ ," Scott hissed, like they were back in school during a test and half the freaking room wasn't made up of werewolves. "It's wendigos, Stiles."

"Wendigos! I meant wendigos," he said, playing into Scott's act. "Right. So. Wendigos. What a bummer, huh?"

The sigh Derek heaved would have made any Shakespearean actor proud. Derek was such a drama queen - it was a Hale family trait, actually. Ooh, maybe Peter was in a play, and one of his costumes incorporated glitter? The vision of Peter dressed up as a Rockette and participating in a kick line was ridiculous but oddly sexy, so Stiles indulged it for a second before trying to focus on the matter at hand.

The mental car crash inspired by that damned glitter was just so hard to look away from.

"Yes, Stiles, wendigos," Derek said, voice somehow both incredibly flat and full of biting sarcasm. Though Stiles strongly suspected the sarcasm was actually mostly imparted by his eyebrows rather than his inflection. "You know, shapeshifters who crave human flesh and can't go longer than a day or so without feeding. They get hungry enough and they'll eat _anyone_ , like the ten-year-old girl that almost got taken last night. So yeah, Stiles. A _bummer_. Thanks for that description - very helpful. I'm glad you're here and part of this discussion or we might have missed that."

"Wow. You know, words hurt Derek, and so do tones of voice and eyebrow angles and I am feeling very wounded. I think I'm going to need an apology, but not right now because we are trying to stop a group of wendigos from eating anyone else, Derek, so I would appreciate it if you would stay on topic."

"Stiles," Scott said, sounding tired and exasperated and fond. Scott was great - a little dumb, a little easily distracted, but great. Though why _he_ hadn't been distracted by the glitter was a good-- no. Wendigos.

"Okay, alright. Sorry. I'm a little," Stiles lifted his hands and put them to either side of his head, shaking them. Scott - amazing, wonderful Scott - made a sympathetic noise, expression going all concerned. Scott totally got him, even if his best friend would be less sympathetic if he knew what had _caused_ the six or seven car pile-up in Stiles' brain. "But I'm focused, I'm on this, I'm good. Okay. So we're killing them, yeah? They tried to eat a little girl, Scott!" he added when his best friend looked like he was going to protest. "If Peter hadn't been there, that would have... it would have been bad, man. You talked to them, gave them that whole True Alpha charm thing, offered them a chance to leave peacefully--"

"And now the Hale Pack's Alpha will happily deal with the issue if you won't," Peter interrupted smoothly, all cool smirk, bite-able neck and glitter-filled hair. "Won't you, Derek?"

"Let's not start the Alpha-waving contest, okay? Can we maybe just not? Please?"

"Is there something else you would like to wave instead, Stiles?" The way Peter could fucking _purr_ when he talked was just... it was grossly unfair, was what it was. How was Stiles supposed to _not_ pop a boner when Peter, looking like a glittery wet dream, could talk like that?

"Stiles, we can't just kill them," Scott said when Stiles was too busy choking on his tongue and thinking thoughts to circle back to the wendigo problem. Then he paused, eyes darting between everyone else at the meeting. Erica, Boyd and Lydia seemed deeply unimpressed with the idea of not killing the man-eating monsters, while Isaac and Liam seemed (like Scott) to be wavering. The three of them were puppies, really, and it was a good thing that the McCall pack's territory also had the Hale Pack to keep people safe.

Scott was too _good_ to be an effective Alpha all the time. He was great when it came to Supernatural beings who wanted or were at least willing to play by the rules. Derek had proved able to step in and take care of the other side of things when Scott couldn't, thank God. It was a weird, mostly symbiotic relationship that worked largely because the individual members of each pack liked each other so much.

"Scott. Buddy. They gotta die," Stiles said, trying not to sound too unkind. It worked, because Scott's expression fell before he took a deep breath and nodded. There - the hard part was done. Scott would still be reluctant, and he would still probably want Derek to take point, but he was in. The wendigos had been given their chance, they hadn't taken it, and now they would be dealt with.

Thus, Stiles allowed himself to tune out the conversation again. They didn't need him to help with the plan and they probably wouldn't even want him to come with them. Wendigos they knew how to handle, so they didn't need to pick his brain for info on the creatures either. Stiles was free to get back to the mystery of the glitter. The mystery driving him mad. The mystery he was no closer to solving.

"Okay, I didn't want to do this, because serious meeting, people in danger, whatever. But I just. I gotta know." Everyone was staring at him, Stiles could feel it, but he still only had eyes for Peter. Peter, who looked fucking delighted, mouth pulled up in that smug, mocking, slightly cruel smirk that Stiles loved to hate and sometimes pictured when he jacked off. "Peter. Why the fuck is there glitter in your hair?"

"Oh my God," Stiles heard from at least four of the people gathered. They all thought he was a moron, which was fine. He didn't care so long as he got to _know_. He watched one of Peter's brows arch, and then the other climbed up to join it until the werewolf was wearing an expression of smug shock.

"Is there? I suppose I must have missed some of it," he said, like he hadn't _planned_ this just to fuck with Stiles. Though when he lifted a hand to his hair and covered juuuust the right spot, Stiles was pretty sure Peter was silently admitting that he had known the glitter was there all along. "My students had art class today," wait, what? Students? _Students_?! "And I believe they were using glitter," Peter continued, maybe not seeing the way Stiles was still trying to process the word 'student' and make it mean something in relation to Peter fucking Hale. "Jamie fell on the playground," _playground_? "and when I picked him up he must have gotten it there by accident."

Stiles knew that Peter had definitely answered his question with words, and he was even pretty damn sure what all those words meant in any other context. But 'students', 'art class', 'playground' and 'picked him up' just... it didn't all come together to form a picture that Stiles could understand. Not when the central figure was Peter fucking Hale. How could Peter have students? Ones who were young enough to play on playgrounds? Ones who fell and then let Peter pick them up, presumably to comfort them? Just. What.

"What?" he said on a croak. Stiles couldn't help but look around the room, wondering if everyone else's minds were as blown as his... only to find that everyone else looked pretty unruffled. "Students? Glitter? What?" he tried again, wondering if he sounded as desperate as he felt.

"Peter was a kindergarten teacher before the fire, Stiles," Derek told him slowly while the man in question just kept looking smug. Stiles had known that, he had, it was just. That was pre-fire Peter. After-fire Peter was an asshole who was maybe a little more than a little crazy, and he was super hot but also kind of mean and just a little sadistic, and just. Those two pictures didn't want to fit together. At all. Almost everything about Peter that fell under the 'pre-fire' label in Stiles' brain was mostly ignored because Peter wasn't that guy anymore. Except maybe he was, which... what. "He got his job back at the beginning of this school year."

Stiles... Stiles had no response. He had no idea how he had missed this, he had no idea how Peter fucking Hale being a kindergarten teacher even would _work_ , because Peter was... he was Peter. He was Peter and he had students who he picked up because they'd fallen and gotten an ouchie, and he let them leave glitter in his hair and just. Just.

"What?"

Both the McCall Pack and the Hale Pack seemed to collectively roll their eyes at him before getting back to business. Part of him knew that, yeah, in the grand scheme of things wendigos were probably more important than the fact that parents trusted their small human children to Peter all day. It was just... Peter. Peter taught kindergarten.

Stiles was still staring, only now Peter was staring back. They held each other's gazes for a long, long moment... and then Peter winked. The bastard _winked_ , then turned back to pack business to become part of the planning process. Every time he cocked his head, or shook it, or moved, or even _spoke_... every move of his head made the light of Derek's loft catch on the bits of glitter left in his hair.

And in Stiles' mind the cars that had been involved in the traffic accident caught fire and, as one, exploded.

**Author's Note:**

> It is looking very likely that I will spend tomorrow and possibly even the whole weekend tucked inside drinking hot cocoa and watching the snow fall. This means I will have much writing time - so it's still not too late to toss me a prompt! I will try to treat all of them seriously, but some of them may end up being crack. XD I apologize. XD
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://tahlreth.tumblr.com) where you can throw me prompts in my ask box, or you can leave them here. <3 If you leave them in my tumblr and want them to be a gift here, just leave your AO3 name as well! :D


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